Table of Contents

This study was originally processed, archived, and disseminated by Data Sharing for Demographic Research (DSDR), a project funded by the
Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD).

Principal Investigator(s):United States Department of Health and Human Services. National Institutes of Health. Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development

Summary:

The overall purpose of this study was to examine the influence of
variations in early childcare histories on the psychological
development of infants and toddlers from a variety of family
backgrounds. This general objective was addressed through a
prospective, longitudinal study of the experiences of 1,364 children and
their families, which took into account the
complex interactions among child characteristics and those
of the human and physical environments in which
the children were reared.
Research Goals
The specific research aims were as fo... (more info)

The overall purpose of this study was to examine the influence of
variations in early childcare histories on the psychological
development of infants and toddlers from a variety of family
backgrounds. This general objective was addressed through a
prospective, longitudinal study of the experiences of 1,364 children and
their families, which took into account the
complex interactions among child characteristics and those
of the human and physical environments in which
the children were reared.

Research Goals

The specific research aims were as follows:

Examining the relationship between infants' childcare
arrangements (defined in terms of hours, type, quality, and
stability of care and the age at which the child entered care)
and children's concurrent and long-term development.
Specifically, the study investigated the association between
children's experiences in childcare and their social, emotional,
language, and cognitive development. The social-emotional
assessments included measures of attachment, independence,
compliance, behavior problems, prosocial and antisocial behavior,
and general competence in interacting with peers. Cognitive variables
include general developmental level and problem solving skills. Language
assessments incorporated measures of children's expressive and receptive communicative competence.

Examining whether the social ecology of the home
moderates the effects of childcare, i.e., whether children
from different home environments are differentially affected by
similar childcare experiences. The study examined the
moderating effects of parents' values and attitudes,
psychological adjustment and mental health, stress and social
support, child-rearing practices, time use, interactions with the
child, the marital relationship, and family demographics.

Examining whether individual differences among children
moderate the effects of infant care on child development. The
study examined the moderating effects of such child
characteristics as age, sex, health, birth order, and
temperament.

Identify demographic and family characteristics
associated with families' childcare decisions. The study examined whether
specific childcare arrangements are related to
the parents' social class, marital status, psychological
adjustment and personality, child-rearing values and attitudes,
parenting practices, stress, social support, marital
relationship, and the availability of childcare in the community.

Provide a natural history of infant care in the
1990s, and help establish a baseline of data pertaining to the
kinds of care being used by families. Whereas other national
databases, such as those provided by the United States Census Bureau, provide
static estimates of the number of children in different types of
childcare, this network study supplements that knowledge
with longitudinal data on successive enrollments into day care at
various ages, patterns of arrangements used concurrently and over
time, and the stability of arrangements during the first three
years of life. One of the most valuable aspects of the
collaborative study is the opportunity it provides to obtain a
more complete and accurate picture of patterns of infant care
used by families today. Census surveys use only gross categories
of care (e.g., center vs. in-home). In this study, more fine-grained
information regarding the types of centers and home-care
facilities was gathered.

Examine the consequences for families of maternal
employment and childcare choices. Family relationships,
parental mental health, family stress, and so on, are not just
inputs to child development or moderators of childcare effects,
they are also outcomes. High-quality childcare may alleviate
family stress and enhance parental adjustment. Low-quality childcare may add to the stress parents experience. Although the main
focus in the study was on the effect of childcare on the child, the
study also examined the effect of childcare on the family.

Identify demographic characteristics of childcare
associated with childcare quality. Of interest to policy makers
is another aspect of the study, the investigation of those
regulatory characteristics that predict care of higher quality.
These characteristics included the level and type of caregiver
training, the size of the childcare group, the auspices of the
childcare program (public/private, profit/nonprofit,
independent/chain, employer-sponsored/church-based), whether the
facility was licensed or unlicensed, the level of payment and
fees, and whether the caregiver was a relative of the family.

Data File Organization

504 data files were compiled for this study and are organized into 3 main groups:

Analytical Data Sets (ADS) -- The raw data were examined and composites defined by small groups of individual principal investigators according to the demographic, family, childcare, and child outcome content of the data. The psychometric and distributional qualities of the variables along with site differences were examined. A set of variables that was psychometrically and distributionally acceptable to be used in analytic analyses was designed to test the study hypotheses. These data files comprise Parts 1-49 of the study data material.

Supplemental Data Sets -- New and revised analysis variables as well as across-time mean scores and primary composites were produced as a supplement to the original Analytical Data Sets. These data files comprise Parts 50-55 of the study data material.

Raw Census-Related Data Sets -- Files were produced using geocoded addresses for survey respondents to match block group level data from the 1990 and 2000 Censuses for investigators to create additional measures of interest from the geocoded addresses. These data files comprise Parts 56-58 of the study data material.

Raw Data Sets -- The raw data were made available and comprise Parts 59-505 of the study data material.

Training Workshop Recordings

A three day summer training workshop on the SECCYD was put on by the NICHD at the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Recordings of that workshop, coordinated with the Powerpoint slides used during presentations, are freely available to the public at the adressess described below.

Guidelines for Applying for Restricted Data

Before you begin an application you will need the following information to complete the form

General Requirements:

appointment at research institution; appointment must be under the jurisdiction of the receiving institution

degree requirements (possibly doctorate)

Must be submitted:

project description

IRB approval

approved security plan

roster of research and IT staff who can access or view the data or computer where data are hosted.

confidentiality pledges for all people on roster

Some require:

CV's

This data collection may not be used for any purpose other than statistical reporting and analysis. Use of these data to learn the identity of any person or establishment is prohibited. To protect respondent privacy, the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development is restricted from general dissemination. Users interested in obtaining these data must complete an Agreement for the Use of Confidential Data, specify the reasons for the request, and obtain IRB approval or notice of exemption for their research. Apply for access to these data through the ICPSR restricted data contract portal, which can be accessed via the <a href=" http://dx.doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR21942.v1">study home page</a> .

Any public-use data files in this collection are available for access by the general public.
Access does not require affiliation with an ICPSR member institution.

Dataset(s)

WARNING: Because this study has many datasets, the download all files option has been suppressed, and you will need to download one dataset at a time.

Study Description

Citation

United States Department of Health and Human Services. National Institutes of Health. Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development: Phase III, 2000-2004 [United States]. ICPSR21942-v1. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2010-01-08. http://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR21942.v1

The variable ID in the files listed below has a numeric instead of character format. In order to merge data from these datasets with data from other non-Phase-3-NCES-Raw datasets, the ID variable needs to be converted to a character format:

21942\Data\Raw\ASCII\da21942-0496_Raw-NCES9603.txt

21942\Data\Raw\ASCII\da21942-0496_Raw-NCES9603.tsv

21942\Data\Raw\SAS\da21942-0496_Raw-NCES9603.stc

21942\Data\Raw\SAS\set21942-0496_Raw-NCES9603.sas

21942\Data\Raw\SAS\ssf21942-0496_Raw-NCES9603.sas

21942\Data\Raw\SPSS\da21942-0496_Raw-NCES9603.sav

21942\Data\Raw\SPSS\set21942-0496_Raw-NCES9603.sps

21942\Data\Raw\STATA\da21942-0496_Raw-NCES9603.dta

21942\Data\Raw\STATA\set21942-0496_Raw-NCES9603.do

21942\Data\Raw\STATA\ssf21942-0496_Raw-NCES9603.do

21942\Data\Raw\STATA\set21942-0496_Raw-NCES9603.dct

During Phase III of the study, data was collected from the study children, the study children's families, after-school caregivers, and teachers from the second through sixth grades. Data also were collected from friends of the study children and from their families and teachers at fourth and sixth grades. Prior to the start of formal schooling, data were collected on an age-based chronological schedule. With the onset of formal schooling, data were collected on a year-in-school basis. As a result, children who entered school in fall 1996, who accounted for 85 percent of the available sample, became Wave 1. The remaining 15 percent of the sample, who entered school in fall 1997, became Wave 2. However, annual Health and Physical Development Assessments (HPDA), which began when the study children were nine-and-a-half years old, continue on an age-related basis.

The NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development was conducted by a network of investigators called the NICHD Early Child Care Research Network. The network was led and managed by a steering committee that included an independent chairperson, one representative from each of the grantee sites, one representative from the data center, and one representative from NICHD. The steering committee established policies and procedures that governed the operations of the network. The progress of the study was monitored by NICHD and by the steering committee with guidance from an advisory board which was nominated by the director of NICHD.

Methodology

Study Purpose:
To examine the influence of variations in early childcare histories on the psychological development of infants and toddlers from a variety of family backgrounds.

Study Design:
The SECCYD is a multi-site, prospective, longitudinal study of the experiences of 1,364 children and their families. Respondents were sampled from a catchment of some 6,189 children. Children's development was assessed via trained observers, interviewers, questionnaires, and direct testing. Measures were taken on many facets of children's development, such as social, emotional, intellectual, and language development, behavioral problems and adjustment, and physical health.

Sample:

Participants were selected in accordance with a conditionally random sampling plan, which was designed to ensure that the recruited families (a) included mothers who planned to work or to go to school full-time (60 percent) or part-time (20 percent) in the child's first year, as well as some who planned to say at home with the child (20 percent), and (b) reflected the demographic diversity (economic, educational, and ethnic) of the sites. Both two-parent and single-parent families were included. The major exclusionary criteria used were (a) mothers younger than 18 years of age at the time of the child's birth, (b) families who did not anticipate remaining in the catchment area for at least 3 years, (c) children with obvious disabilities at birth or who remained in the hospital more than 7 days postpartum, and (d) mothers not sufficiently conversant in English.

Analyses have indicated that the data do reflect the natural distributions of these factors in the catchment. Therefore, inferences from this data can be made directly to the catchment without back-weighting for the sampling factors. In addition, analyses have shown that the NICHD data reflect to large degree the natural distributions of certain factors measured in the 1990 Census data. However, the NICHD data are not representative in the statistical sense, and therefore inference to the nation as a whole is not possible. Comparisons to other data bases, national or otherwise, should be made with extreme caution.

The 49 Analytical Data Sets (ADS) data contain composite variables, created from the raw data created, by Quantitative Systems Laboratory (QSL) at Vanderbilt University, to be psychometrically and distributionally acceptable for analytical analysis of the study hypotheses.

The 6 Supplemental Data Sets were produced by Research Triangle Institute (RTI) and contain new and revised analysis variables, across-time mean scores, and primary composites.

The 3 Raw Census Related Data Sets were produced using geocoded addresses for survey respondents to match block group- level data from the 1990 and 2000 Censuses, for investigators to create additional measures of interest from the geocoded addresses. The CENS1990 raw dataset contains 947 block group variables for 2,720 address records with start dates before January 1, 1996, for 1295 study children. The CENS2000 raw dataset contains 1,423 block group variables for 2,891 address records with end dates after December 31, 1995, for 1,159 study children.

Response Rates:
During Phase I of the study (1991-1994), a cohort of 1,364 children and their families were recruited at 1 month of age and studied intensively through age 3. During Phase III of the study (2000-2004), a cohort of over 1,100 of the enrolled children and families were followed through sixth grade.

Presence of Common Scales:

Student-Teacher Relationship Scale: Short Form

Social Skills Rating Scale

Middle Childhood H.O.M.E

Child Behavior Checklist

Child-Parent Relationship Scale: Short Form

Child-Caregiver Rel. Scale: Short Form

Girls' Pubertal Development Scale

Boys' Pubertal Development Scale

Woodcock-Johnson Cognitive Sub-tests

Woodcock-Johnson Achievement Sub-tests

Teacher Self Efficacy Scale

Wechsler Abbreviated Scale of Intelligence (WASI)

Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test - III (PPVT)

H.O.M.E Inventory Scoring

Multi Ethnic Identity Measure (MEIM)

Multidimensional Inventory of Black Identity (MIBI)

Woodcock Johnson-Revised Achievement Scale

Woodcock Johnson-Revised Cognitive Scale

COS Structural Scales

COS Behavior Scales

COS Qualitative Scales

Extent of Processing: ICPSR data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of
disclosure. ICPSR also routinely creates ready-to-go data files along with setups in the major
statistical software formats as well as standard codebooks to accompany the data. In addition to
these procedures, ICPSR performed the following processing steps for this data collection:

Created variable labels and/or value labels.

Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes.

Version(s)

Original ICPSR Release:2009-10-30

Version History:

2014-11-21 releasing additional documentation - Measures Chart

2014-10-21 Releasing questionnaires and user guide.

2010-01-26 User Agreement updated.

2010-01-08 Various data and documentation was resupplied. Other files were processed differently or had errors fixed.